Throwing Sparks (39 page)

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Hamdan returned to his post as a distinguished security guard, having passed with flying colours the test of protecting the Palace’s inviolability.

He was not aware of my role in Issa’s demise, whereas I knew what his tongue had done to him.

The judge was lenient and held that he had acted in self-defence as a guard whose duty it was to protect the Palace. A man is duty-bound, he ruled, to defend himself, whether his wealth, his honour, or his blood.

It was Hamdan’s injury that had convinced the judge and enabled him to hand down his verdict with a clear conscience. Hamdan did no jail time, spending two months being pampered and coddled at the hospital until the brief court appearance when he was found innocent.

Although he had proof of his innocence through the judgement, Hamdan’s heart felt heavy with guilt, especially when he was around someone who had witnessed the scene. He would sidle up to me any time he saw me going through the Palace gates, but I would hurry away before he could delve into what had really taken place.

He would often greet me from a distance and I would pretend not to notice. But he nailed me one night as I stood at the gates supervising the orderly departure of a cavalcade of dignitaries visiting from Washington DC. They were leaving a reception held in their honour by the Master with whom they had close business ties.

As the departing guests thinned out, he abandoned his post and approached me. He mumbled a few words, visibly ner­vous, as if trying to avoid reminding me of something unpleasant or to shield me from it.

‘I expected you to visit me in hospital,’ he said. ‘But I figured you were busy, so I didn’t hold it against you.’ He paused and then added, ‘Your brother Ibrahim came three times. He was very kind, and it cheered me up.’

‘Ibrahim?’ I said with surprise.

‘He spoke well of you, every time. When I complained that you hadn’t been to see me, he laughed, saying that you always had been a busy man. He said to remind you that it had been seven – or maybe nine – years since you last promised him a visit. I think he said nine.’ Hamdan frowned. ‘Is it true that you haven’t visited him in nine years – or was he joking?’

‘None of your business,’ I snapped.

Sensing my annoyance and my resistance to being questioned, he abandoned the preliminaries and got to the point. ‘Issa was a good man. He didn’t deserve that kind of an end, but I couldn’t say anything other than what I said.’ The words tumbled from his lips as if he were finally unburdening himself of a weight he had been carrying and could not take another step without dropping it to the ground. ‘I just want to know – what really happened?’

‘You know better than anyone what happened. Didn’t you say that you killed him in self-defence?’

He was stunned by my response. He had clearly not expected me to pin Issa’s death at his door after witnessing every detail of the scene.

He was about to say something when I cut him off. ‘Are you going to stand here chatting all day? Aren’t you on duty? Go on, get back to the guardhouse.’

Hamdan returned to his post but his eyes darted towards me repeatedly. My aunt sprang to mind and I wondered whether she had gone back to her house in the neighbourhood. I should have asked him.

23

Some things are inescapable.

The past is like a dormant volcano. We settle on its slopes, firmly convinced that the lava has cooled and petrified. But before we secure our hold, the volcano erupts and we are swept away, scorched and covered in ash. Every hurt I had ever caused anyone was erupting into flames before my eyes and all the grief of my past was surging into view.

My aunt was like an umbilical cord linking me to the darkness of the primeval womb, a deadly germ wreaking havoc in my lungs. She had completed her inventory of my transgressions and misdeeds. She could shut off my air passages and bring me to dark and silent suffocation, alone without solace or succour. She would not die before doing me in first. Where could she have gone?

It was plausible that the worm might still be wriggling after all this time. More than seventy years had passed since it had begun slithering. Her staying power was extraordinary, like stagnant water that neither evaporates nor is absorbed.

Women are survivors; no matter the loss, they are able to regenerate.

Did I hanker for Maram? It had been three months since our last encounter and in my mind I was the one who had ended the relationship. But she never again asked after me following Issa’s death, as if I had been no more than a bothersome button rubbing uncomfortably on the neckline of her blouse. With the button removed, she could breathe more easily and also be more alluring.

She had grown distant after I left the Palace.

One day, out of the blue, the Master had summarily dismissed me.

‘Didn’t you say you were keen to move on?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see you around here any more. You remind me of things I’d rather forget. Tomorrow is your last day.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘As long as you mind your step, you’ll be fine.’

‘I just want to say—’

‘We’re done. If I need you, I’ll find you.’

He left me frozen in place, just as he had the very first time I was ushered into his presence. He walked away with his usual swagger, declining to offer any explanation for his sudden decision and indifferent to my turmoil.

Had he found out about my relationship with Maram or that I had been in touch with Mawdie? Was he worried that I would expose the truth about Issa’s killing or did he sense my unwavering hostility and the murderous thoughts I harboured?

I doubted it. Had he sensed the merest wisp of an inkling about any of these, he would have ground me into the dirt, not just thrown me out.

What, then, had happened exactly? I wondered if the decision had been instigated by Maram to pre-empt anything that might threaten her life with the Master. I was already more or less convinced that she had carried on with me simply in order to destroy Issa and, therefore, that I was as expendable as an old shoe that was no longer fit to be worn to a filthy toilet, much less to fancy parties.

My decision to leave her was a considered one but when she responded with indifference, I was stung. I could find no trace of her at the Palace even though I looked for her everywhere. The Master’s sudden decision added to the distance between us and compounded my banishment.

Maram was just the same as that old worm I had for an aunt – maybe the same blood ran in their veins. Both of them were devious and underhanded and they dragged people down without the slightest compunction.

My only hope of finding her was to contact her girlfriends whose homes we had used for our trysts. Those women could always be found in a shopping centre, particularly Iceland Mall. I loitered around there, convinced that one of them would help me to track down Maram. The mall thronged with women of every hue, all of whom had some shady story or other.

Could they sense I was on their trail?

I saw a friend of Maram’s, a woman called Lama’a, but after that one time I was never able to catch her or any of the others. The day I saw Lama’a she was hanging on the arm of a young stud who looked for all the world as if he were some gold insignia shining alongside the rest of her glittering accessories. He brimmed with health and vitality, and his muscles rippled under his shirt.

She removed her arm from his and he looked around peevishly, maybe for something or someone to shore up his machismo. I went up to Lama’a, raising my hand in greeting.

‘Do you know where Maram is?’ I asked without preliminaries.

Flustered by my sudden appearance, she reached for the young man’s arm.

‘Umm,’ she faltered, ‘who
are
you, mister?’

‘Have you forgotten me, Lama’a?’

‘Lama’a?’ Her voice was shrill. ‘No, no, you must be mistaken,’ she said. ‘I’m Shama’a.’ Her laughter was shameless and coarse as she tugged at her boyfriend’s arm and moved on. I almost insisted, but looking at the stud with bristling muscles, I thought better of it.

A few young women nearby who had caught the gist of our exchange looked at my frozen countenance with evident scorn. Did I seem that decrepit to them?

I suppose that the sight of an older man feverishly scanning women’s faces and looking women over as they congregated in the malls and around the shopfronts was cause enough for ridicule.

Young women evaluated contenders for their affections on the basis of age. Men deemed too old for such inappropriately youthful pleasures as banter and flirtatiousness were simply put in their place with a couple of well-chosen forms of deferential address, such as ‘uncle’ or ‘mister’.

When Lama’a first came to the Palace, she had taken up with a sixty-something man who disguised his advanced age with hair dye, Viagra and frequent medical treatments. Age was no object to her, and she never called him anything but ‘dearest’ and ‘darling’.

But a scornful ‘mister’ was all she had for me.

Maram had been a luscious sweet that no longer wished to tickle my fancy, but at this point finding my aunt was the greater priority. After leaving the Palace, I had gone back to the villa and lived there holed up like a rat. I was paralysed with fear that my aunt’s condition would become public knowledge. I no longer had the Master’s impunity to protect me and I was sure the discovery would set me on a downward spiral to perdition.

The Master had told me I would be fine as long as I minded my step. For a moment, I wondered whether he was holding my aunt hostage. But the notion was too preposterous: I was hardly the kind of threat to him that would warrant taking a hostage as a bargaining chip. The jumble of events blurred together in my mind and ended up like a foul-tasting, grit-coloured liquid.

I tried to clear my mind and hang on to just one idea but no sooner had I done that than a myriad of other possibilities bubbled up inside my head.

I needed to find her before she blew up in my face. Her story was grizzly enough to land me in big trouble. If he wanted to, the Master could have me led to the execution block purely on the evidence of what had been recorded in the videos.

I reminded myself to keep my priorities in order. The videos and the Master were irrelevant. My aunt’s disappearance disturbed me, and I would have no peace of mind until I found out where she was. Even if it killed me. Or her, for that matter. Where could her tired old feet have carried her?

A visit to Ibrahim had clearly become imperative if I was to get rid of all the static that was buzzing in my head. It was more than likely that she had gone to him.

I rang the doorbell and also knocked for good measure, and a boy of about twelve or a little older opened. His poise and good manners were striking and without first trying to ascertain who I was or the purpose of my visit, he invited me in with the customary words of welcome.

‘Are you Ibrahim Fadel’s son?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, that’s right. Welcome.’

‘Is your father at home?’

‘Please come in. Welcome to our home,’ he said, adding formally, ‘We are blessed by your visit.’

He showed me in and ushered me to the seat that had pride of place in the parlour. He asked after my health and invited me to make myself comfortable. He disappeared inside the house to fetch his father and his little brother joined me.

The boy was the spitting image of my father. He greeted and welcomed me as is proper but with far more reserve than his older sibling, and then sat absolutely still watching me. He scanned my features and my general appearance and when our eyes met, he smiled. It was the exact same smile I had worn at his age.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Tariq. Tariq Ibrahim Fadel.’

A chill ran through me and goosebumps covered my skin. His expression betrayed nothing; he did not notice my reaction and just fiddled with the armrest of his chair. Then he turned his attention to rearranging a pile of religious books on the table in front of him.

I looked around at the simple furniture in the room. It was a modest house and somewhat ramshackle with steel girders that protruded from the roof. I had the impression that the structure was just barely standing. But it was a home and it was full of the smell of life.

Voices drifting in from the back of the house sounded loving and sweet. For the boy called Tariq, I was merely a distraction. His features were my father’s and his demeanour mine.

‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked him.

He shook his head indifferently. I had wanted to spark his curiosity, but he was not interested. He continued to examine me as he fiddled with the armrest. Then a precociously good-looking boy came into the room. He looked somehow familiar and greeted me bashfully before hopping over to sit beside little Tariq. He melted my heart and I wanted to give him a hug, but he shrank back and just held out his hand silently. I asked Tariq who he was.

‘This is Aghyad.’

‘Your brother?’

‘No, my cousin. My auntie’s son.’

So here was another Tariq with a paternal aunt of his own. Who was this sister who had appeared all of a sudden at the end of my life? Life plants the seeds of stories just as it propagates the events that move stories along. Was life breeding a new version of the Tariq and Khayriyyah story? Was this a hereditary propagation of the story of an aunt and a child with minor variations?